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How to Attract the Best Merger Candidates
Never stop looking.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Mergers: Your Complete Guide
Firms that are serious about merging in smaller firms on a regular basis understand that doing mergers is all about planting seeds. A buyer has to have this attitude:
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Every day of every year, at least one firm decides to test the merger waters. If our efforts to identify sellers are made continuously throughout the year, every year, sooner or later, we will find at least one interested merger candidate and probably more than one.
Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | It’s Not Just the Numbers
An AI engineer can help accounting teams tackle bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and build capacity.
This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by Radical Pricing: Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, and Build a Top-Value Firm
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It’s Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines
For years, accounting firm owners have treated the “next hire” question as a simple one: bring on another accountant. However, that assumption is starting to cost firms real time and money.
In this recent case study, MoneyPenny, LLC shares what happened when their newest hire wasn’t an accountant at all. She was a recent graduate with a degree in AI, and within her first weeks, she had built a tool that solved a problem the whole team had been living with for years.
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JOIN From Scorekeeper to Strategist CAS Workshop | BUY “It’s Not Just the Numbers”
She graduated in the first AI cohort to come through her university and joined the firm knowing nothing about accounting. What she did know was how to watch a process and ask why it worked the way it did.
It’s the Client’s Perception That Counts
Look at your firm through their eyes.
By Martin Bissett
Business Development On a Budget
There used to be an old exercise used in training sessions about customer relations or selling or leadership that went like this. The trainer would ask the group to think about the color green. A few seconds later he would ask them what type of green they were thinking of, and of course there would be many variations of green.
The point is that, as the saying goes, perception is reality. Whatever each person perceived as green, that would be the reality for them – but it would be different for each person in the room.
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Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney: Your Accounting Career Starts Before Your First Job Offer | Accounting Conversations
Practical experience, thoughtful questions, and strong communication help students build careers that reach beyond the classroom.
Sponsored by Radical Pricing by the Radical CPA, Jody Padar | See Today’s Special Offer
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Accounting Conversations
With Chayton Farlee
Center for Accounting Transformation
A perfect GPA can open a door. It cannot explain a client’s financial story, replace practical experience, or demonstrate how someone responds when there is no answer key.
For accounting students eager to distinguish themselves, that difference matters.
On Accounting Conversations, host Chayton Farlee welcomes Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney, co-hosts of The Young CPA Success Show, for a candid discussion about preparing for an accounting career. Drawing on their work in virtual CFO services with Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, the guests challenge students to look beyond familiar recruiting paths and consider what makes an accountant valuable to the people they serve.
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Their advice starts with a seemingly modest assignment: Get close to the books.
Students may picture their future in consulting, financial leadership, audit, or tax. Hood and Kinney argue that those ambitions make understanding everyday accounting more essential. READ MORE →
Loyalty Tax: Accounting’s Lose-Lose Incentive System | Big 4 Transparency
Employees lose stability and firms lose money. So why do we do it?
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer
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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines
A growing body of compensation data suggests that accounting firms may be unintentionally penalizing their most loyal employees.
In a recent solo episode of the Big 4 Transparency, founder Dominic Piscopo unpacks what he calls the “loyalty tax” — the pay gap between internally promoted employees and externally hired peers performing the same role. Drawing on 2024–2025 compensation data from thousands of U.S. and Canadian professionals, Piscopo outlines how this structural imbalance is reshaping career incentives across the profession.
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The loyalty tax, as defined in the episode, is the percentage difference in pay where externally hired employees earn more than internally promoted employees at the same level. According to the data, that gap is far from trivial. In the U.S., first-year senior associates hired externally earn roughly 6.3% more than internally promoted seniors, while first-year managers see an 8.9% premium. Even at the senior manager level, the gap persists. Canadian data shows a similar pattern, with especially pronounced spreads at the senior and senior manager levels.
The disparity is even more striking in consulting and advisory roles.